Norm Friesen

On January 27, I gave paper at the Institute of Education at UCL London. The topic was Klaus Mollenhauer’s conception of Education and Bildung –as articulated in his Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing.

The abstract is below; and here’s a link to the complete text of my talk.

The talk was based on Mollenhauer’s Introduction to his text, which can be accessed here.

Klaus Mollenhauer’s Forgotten Connections: Education as Remembrance

Franz Kafka opens his intimate “Letter to his Father” by admitting that he simply cannot come to terms with his own upbringing and Bildung –“because the magnitude of the matter goes far beyond the scope of memory and understanding.” This admission is used, perhaps paradoxically, to introduce and frame an educational “undertaking of remembrance” attempted by German educationist Klaus Mollenhauer in his book Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing. Here, Mollenhauer also asserts that “further[ing] the cause of memory” is no less than the “purpose of education” itself, adding that he is referring not only to individual biographical recollection, but also to “collective memory – our common cultural heritage whose core themes education attempts to tease out.”

In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen (Boise State University) discusses a number of core themes that emerge from this effort for Mollenhauer. These include Mollenhauer’s understanding of Bildung as a biographical and experiential “way of the self” that is marked by a particular “pathlessness.” Referencing Wittgenstein in ways unconventional for education, Mollenhauer shows how this path or pathlessness is characterized not so much by success and triumph as by loss and renunciation. These themes also include the recovery of a concrete, even indexical language for education, rather than one abstract and generalizing. Finally, Dr. Friesen will suggest with Mollenhauer that the broader task of remembrance, and thus of education itself, is as much one of difficulty and paradox as it is one of recuperation and clarification.

Here’s the abstract for a short paper I’ve been preparing for a conference:

As a landmark philosopher of language and of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations, has been taken up by philosophers of education in English. Christopher Winch (1998), Michael A. Peters (1999), Nicholas Burbules (2010), and others (e.g. Aparece 2005) have engaged extensively with the implications of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind and language for education. One challenge that that they face is Wittgenstein’s use of the word “training” throughout his discussions of language learning and in his periodic references to education. This is made all the more problematic by realizing that the term Wittgenstein actually used was Abrichtung, which refers exclusively to animal dressage or obedience training, connoting also the breaking of an animal’s will. This little-recognized fact has broad implications for many important Wittgenstinian insights into education, extending from literacies as language games to teaching as ostensive definition. This paper sheds light on these implications as well as on those more broadly relevant to Wittgenstein’s life and thought.

Read this short piece here (pdf). 

In this 1997 documentary, director and narrator Harun Farocki offers what might be called a phenomenology of the hand in cinema. The phenomenon in question, of course, is the expressive power and possibilities of the hands in film. In this sense, it can be seen as similar to the phenomenological studies of poetry and literature, such as those of Bachelard or Ingarden, rather than a study of a lived experience per se.

Expressions of Hands (Ausdruck der Hände) 1997 from Norm Friesen on Vimeo.

As a phenomenologist should, Farocki reveals a depth and complexity in his subject matter that is surprising, even evocative of wonder. E.g.:

“Film loves to show the pianist’s hand as much as a hand holding a gun.”

“The fist close-ups in the history of film were of the face; the next featured human hands. Often, hands are supposed to betray something hidden in the expression of the face. For example, the hand might tightly hold onto a glass, while the face appears calm.”

This two-volume text was commissioned by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. In the opening paragraph, McLuhan refers to it as “Project 69,” and memorably explains its purpose as follows:

Project 69 in Understanding Media proposed to provide an approach to media and a syllabus for teaching the nature and effects of media in secondary schools. A new tactic was used, namely to consider not so much the constituents nor the “content” of media, as their effects. I therefore raise the question at once: “Why have the effects of media, whether speech, writing, photography or radio, been overlooked by social observers through the past 3500 years of the Western world?”

In the cryptic note at the top right (on p. 2), McLuhan writes to Harley Parker, with whom he later co-authored Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting (1968) and Counterblast (1969). Parker also appears with McLuhan in the 28 min 1969 film Picnic in Space, directed by Bruce Bacon.

This text reflects McLuhan’s then-coalescing thought as it relates to both education and to multiple media forms; and the text serves as relatively direct and clearly-written precursor for the 1964 Understanding Media.

The full text of this report is available as a 7.5 Mb PDF file.